Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps.

For this week’s recipe swap, we swapped blogs, not recipes, much like The Secret Recipe Club. I was assigned Mary Ellen’s blog, Mary Ellen’s Cooking Creations. Mary Ellen has some amazing recipes, and it was really hard to choose which one I wanted to make… until I saw this one.

I love chicken lettuce wraps. I almost always order them whenever I see them listed on a menu, so to be able to make them at home is like a dream come true. At first, I was intimidated by the long list of ingredients, but a fair amount of them overlapped and it came together pretty easily. I’d strongly advise doing the prep (chopping the garlic, water chestnuts, shallots and mushrooms, and dicing the chicken) ahead of time since that took the longest to prepare. I attempted to make sure that all of the chopped ingredients were roughly the same size. I actually had to run out in between prepping and preparing and once I was home and ready to make the dish, it took maybe 10 minutes to throw together, making it an easy weeknight meal.

It was a bit sweeter than the chicken lettuce wraps I’m used to but still had a ton of flavor. I thought it could use a bit of spiciness so I added about a tablespoon of Colman’s hot mustard. Next time, I’d probably add some Sriracha as well, since we felt it still needed some heat.

In a medium bowl, dissolve the sugar in the warm water. Add soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, tomato paste, lemon juice and sesame oil and mix well. In a small bowl, combine the Dijon mustard, hot mustard and garlic cloves, mix well then add to the other bowl with the rest of the pouring sauce ingredients. Refrigerate until ready to use.

In a small bowl, mix together the soy sauce, brown sugar and rice wine vinegar, then set aside.

Heat the olive oil and 1 Tbsp. sesame oil in a large saute pan or wok over high heat until shimmering. Add the chicken and saute until mostly cooked through, 4 minutes maximum (mine took about 2 minutes). Reduce the heat to medium high, add the remaining 1 Tbsp. sesame oil, followed by the shallots, garlic, water chestnuts and mushrooms. Cook for 1 minute, then add the stir fry sauce and cook an additional 4 minutes. Transfer to a serving dish.

Spoon 1-2 spoonfuls of chicken stir fry mixture onto a leaf of lettuce. Add a spoonful of pouring sauce then wrap and eat like a taco.

8 responses to “Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps.”

I made asian wraps one time and it turned into a bit of a failure. I like that this recipe uses chicken breast cut into cubes instead of ground meat like the one I tried. I think I’ll give it another go! I’d add a little sriracha, too

The ingredient list is slightly daunting but if it yields a tasty meal, I’m all for it! Especially if it is a delicious meal on top of lettuce leaves. My kind of dinner! Can’t wait to test this one out.